The infrastructure for the OpenStack project itself is run with the
same processes, tools and philosophy as any other OpenStack project.
The infrastructure team is an open meritocracy that welcomes new
members. You can read about the OpenStack way on the wiki:

The project infrastructure encompasses all of the systems that are
used in the day to day operation of the OpenStack project as a whole.
This includes development, testing, and collaboration tools. All of
the software that we run is open source, and its configuration is
public. The project still uses a number of systems that do not yet
fall under this umbrella (notably, the main website), but we’re
working to incorporate them so that people may just as easily
contribute to those areas. All new services used by the project
should begin as part of the infrastructure project to ensure easy
collaboration from the start.

Both defects and new features are tracked in the bug system. A number
of tags are used to indicate relevance to a particular subsystem.
There is also a low-hanging-fruit tag associated with bugs that should
provide a gentle introduction to working on the infrastructure project
without needing too much in-depth knowledge or access.

The infrastructure project designates a small number of efforts
underway at any time as priority efforts. These are areas where the
project has decided to focus resources to achieve major initiatives.
These help reviewers prioritize their review workload and help to
ensure the project accomplishes important tasks. Priority efforts are
a great way to get involved in the project as they will generally
provide the most interaction with experienced contributors.

Priority efforts are documented in the infra-specs repo. Each
priority effort has one entry in infra-specs, though that may link to
multiple smaller specifications for individual units of work if the
effort is sufficiently large. Each priority effort also has a single
person designated as the driver of that effort. That person is
responsible for ensuring that anything blocking progress of the effort
is discussed at team meetings and may be a good point of contact for
someone who wants to get involved.

Changes not related to priority efforts will be reviewed by the core
review team as time permits. This may mean that they spend
considerable time in review, but they will be reviewed eventually. If
a change is urgent, you might consider contacting someone in
#openstack-infra on Freenode.

The infrastructure project is open, meaning anyone may join and begin
contributing with no formal process. As an individual’s contributions
and involvement grow, there are more formal roles. These roles are
designed to empower groups of people to get work done in their area of
expertise and interest, as well as supply a strong sense of direction
for the infrastructure project as a whole. Everyone participating in
the project is encouraged to expand their own knowledge while helping
to support and mentor others as they progress.

Core Teams

The infrastructure project is composed of a large number of
subprojects. Every source code repository has its own core team
which is responsible for maintenance of that subproject, with some
groups of repositories sharing a core team. These core teams are
empowered to approve changes that reflect the currently understood
project direction. Changes in project direction or major new
initiatives must be approved by the infrastructure council.

Any existing core team member may nominate someone for addition to
that core team by private communication with the infrastructure PTL.
The PTL will consider the opinions of the existing core team members
and the review history of the person in question, but final
determination of core team membership (additions and removals) rests
with the PTL. This process is private to enable honest evaluations
in a safe environment.

Infrastructure Core Team

Individuals who show an interest in a wide range of areas of the
infrastructure project may be asked to join the infra-core team. To
provide a baseline level of support to all of our subprojects and to
ensure that important efforts may move forward, this team has
approval rights in all infrastructure repositories. Members of this
team may not be experts in all areas, but know their limits, and
will not exceed those limits when reviewing changes outside of their
area of expertise.

They are expected to have a wide general knowledge of what is going
on in the infrastructure project and to help guide overall project
direction. To that end, they are able to veto specs proposed to the
infrastructure council.

Infrastructure Council

The infrastructure council is the technical design body for the
infrastructure project. While individuals and groups are empowered
to execute the designs from the concil, major technical designs are
agreed upon as a group to ensure that our large set of projects are
all working together to the same end. The council need not delve
too deeply into technical detail – just enough so that development
efforts may happen in parallel and work toward a common goal.

All members of any infrastructure project core team have a seat on
the Council. The Council is responsible for approving changes in
project direction, major new initiatives, setting priority efforts,
and addition or removal of projects.

Any such changes should be proposed to the infra-specs repository.
Anyone is welcome to review specs and they are expected to evolve
during the review process. When a change to infra-specs is ready
for final approval, the author will add the change to the infra team
meeting agenda so that the entire team is notified that the spec is
ready. Members of the council will vote by leaving reviews on the
spec to approve or reject the change. The determination will be
based on a majority vote, with members of the infra-core team able
to veto, and in the case of a tie, the PTL will cast the deciding
vote. The PTL will execute the workflow action on the change after
the vote.

Specs are living documents, and once approved, should be maintained
for the duration of the effort they describe. Substantial changes
in direction should go through the same process described above.
The PTL may chose to approve insubstantial changes without the
formal council voting process.

Infrastructure Root Team

While core membership is analogous to the same system in other
OpenStack projects, because the infrastructure team operates
production servers there is another sub-group of the infrastructure
team that has root access to all servers. Root membership is
handled in the same way as core membership. Root members must also
be infra-core members, but infra-core members may not necessarily be
root members. This is because primary system administration is
performed through code review, so anyone able to log into a machine
to execute commands must be able to approve those same commands in
configuration management; otherwise it would be easier for a person
to bypass puppet than use it in the intended fashion.

Root access is generally only necessary to launch new servers,
perform low-level maintenance, manage DNS, or fix problems. In
general it is not needed for day-to-day system administration and
configuration which is done in puppet (where anyone may propose
changes). Therefore it is generally reserved for people who are
well versed in infrastructure operations and can commit to spending
a significant amount of time troubleshooting on servers.

Some individuals may need root access to individual servers; in
these cases the infra-core group may grant root access on a limited
basis.

We review each others changes before they are merged. This helps us
improve the quality of the code we produce as well as ensure that we
are working together as a team. Generally we expect at least two
members of the core review team to approve a change before it is
merged, but we are flexible in this requirement – typo fixes, or
other simple changes may be approved with less formality.

The primary purpose of change review is to catch substantial errors
before they are merged. In order to keep this process useful and
avoid frustration for both authors and reviewers, please do not leave
negative reviews for insubstantial faults or potential improvements.
The purpose is not to make someone else’s code match your vision of
perfection, but to enable all of us to work together on a project.

Please use discretion when deciding what is important enough for
someone to spend the time to rework and for you to spend the time
re-reviewing. Sometimes minor things are important, such as
consistent use of hyphens versus underscores in a configuration
language. Sometimes they are not, such as whitespace in
documentation.

If you would like to mention minor improvements such as this, feel
free to do so, but please do not leave a negative score on the review.
If you mention them along with other more substantial criticisms,
please note them in a review, for example, with “(nit)” or “(not a
-1)” or “you may want to fix this if you are updating the patch
anyway”.

Please also see the section in the Infrastructure Manual on peer review.